The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo

by Byrne, Kerrigan

  She’d expected fury on his face. Darkness.

  But his cool expression reminded her of the serene, mirrorlike fens on a windless day. Almost pleasant. His demeanor unyielding, determined, but eerily calm. “I won’t say a word.” He petted her curls solicitously, the specter of a smile toying with his rigid mouth. “But it won’t happen again.”

  Struck by the odd note in his voice, she straightened. “What do you mean?”

  Glancing down, he peered into the rook’s crate with a new appreciation. “Tell me more about our friend, here,” he cajoled, daring to smooth the feathers at the tame bird’s throat.

  “But Ash…”

  “It’s my birthday,” he reminded her. “Let’s not think on the past … or the future. I want to hear all about Attila the Rook, and your collection of conquerors.”

  Easily diverted by her passion for her animals, Lorelai launched into an animated retelling of the day she’d found Attila flapping in a terrible circle, his wing somehow caught beneath a rock.

  She didn’t notice that Ash only half listened. That he stared at her exposed ankle with glittering obsidian eyes.

  He hid his murderous thoughts for hours as they played with fleet-footed, mischievous fox pups, and fed grapes to appreciative turtles that trundled around on the mattress in no great hurry.

  She’d never guessed that Ash was certain, memory or no memory, that this was the best birthday he’d ever had, by far. That he understood she fixed broken creatures because no one cared enough to fix her.

  And yet, despite her impediment, she had built a life of enchantment.

  A life Ash knew would be vastly improved if it had one less brother in it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The perfect opportunity to rid the world of Mortimer Weatherstoke presented itself several weeks later.

  “Are you certain I can’t accompany you into Heybridge today?” Lorelai asked, her azure eyes brimming with hope.

  Ash looked at his feet, concentrating mightily on picking his way back through the verdant marshes toward Southbourne Grove. In truth, he simply hadn’t the constitution to meet the hope, and subsequent disappointment, in Lorelai’s expression.

  He ran his hands over a clump of tall grasses, snatching at one and using it as an idle switch against an occasional cloud of gnats. “The trip will be dull as dishwater,” he lied. “Sir Robert has secured me an apprenticeship, and I’ll retrieve a suit at the tailor just in time to meet with dry old men all day. You’d be unspeakably bored.”

  As much as Ash despised denying her anything, he couldn’t allow her to be privy to his nefarious intentions.

  “I’m never bored when I’m with you,” she said earnestly, threading her slim fingers through his, and grasping his bicep with her other hand. They often walked like this, her grip letting him support some of her weight. “And I should very much like to see you in a suit, I think.”

  His fingers engulfed her hand, perfectly cradled in the grooves between her knuckles. He did his best not to cling to her as an emotion shimmered through him, one he was beginning to identify.

  One he fiercely hoped she’d one day return.

  He hated the idea of wearing a suit less than he had before, if the sight of him in it would please her. Since he’d risen from his sickbed, his wardrobe had consisted of Mortimer’s cast-off white shirtsleeves, some ready-made trousers, and dusty old vests. Not that he minded. Clothes were simply a means by which to cover his scars.

  Ash found it a chore to match his long stride to her stilted one, even as the mud gave way to the vast grounds of the manor home, but he’d rather crawl on his hands and knees than cause her discomfiture over her impediment. How she made this trek through the treacherous marshes alone so often, he’d never know.

  For a few months now, he’d become her official packhorse, carting crates and animals back and forth to the estuary. The journey had been difficult on his ankle, at first, but surging across soggy, unsteady ground seemed to strengthen him quickly. Besides, Lorelai knew all the paths through the wetlands, showing him just where to step to avoid a bog or a hidden pond beneath the cover of reeds.

  This was her sanctuary, belonging as much to her as it did the wildlife here.

  At dawn, they’d made the journey to free Hannibal the snake back into the reeds, his missing tail having healed over to a round nub sufficient for slithering about.

  Lorelai had barely shed any tears this time, but they’d stood for a silent while, watching the impossibly green fens dappled by ponds give way to the sea. The water stretched out until the curve of the earth met the low-hanging clouds on the horizon. Clouds that seemed to be crawling over each other in a race to reach the shore.

  Now they had to hurry back to Southbourne in time for him to disembark.

  “It’s not fair that Mortimer can accompany you, but I cannot,” she complained.

  “Mortimer is your father’s representative to the foundry owners.” Ash lifted a nonchalant shoulder, as though he accepted that to be the way of things.

  “Father is so old-fashioned, don’t you think? Refusing to be seen with the working class is antiquated at best. He’s only an earl, after all, and became one because his ancestors were industrious men, too rich for the crown to ignore.” She rested her head against his arm as they walked along. “The older he gets, the more it seems he makes excuses not to leave the house. Especially since Mortimer hit him.”

  “Let’s not speak of your brother just now.” Ash squeezed her hand. That would all be taken care of soon. “It was kind of your father to secure me a position. He seemed to think that in a few years’ time I could help Mr. Thatcher run the foundry or Mr. Robbins run the salt mines … There’s a chance for me to make a good fortune there.” He blithely changed the subject, and noted the moment she took the bait.

  “Father knows how clever you are. And if you are to be a Weatherstoke, then it’s important to him that you’re respected in the community.”

  It was important to Ash, too. If he rid them of Mortimer’s grip of terror, and spent the next few years working his way up the foundry ranks, perhaps he could save enough to approach Lorelai’s father with a proposal …

  Lorelai turned his arm so his palm faced up, idly tracing the strange lines branching from one of the tattooed dragon wings on his forearm. Often when they went to the fens, he rolled his shirtsleeves to the elbow, encouraging her perpetual fondness for tracing his tattoo.

  Her touch was a balm he’d never be able to quantify. All he knew was that her fingers were magic, and they quieted everything within him that threatened to become monstrous.

  “What a mystery you are,” she murmured, not stopping her physical discovery when the scars interrupted the dragon with webs and welts of damaged flesh. Instead, she ran the pads of her fingertips gently over them in rhythmic, soothing gestures.

  The sensation of her fingertips was different where the lye had burned him. Much like being stroked by a ghost, or a memory. Not quite as physically tangible, but just as powerful.

  Perhaps more so.

  “I know we don’t often speak of it, but do you ever wonder what meaning this dragon had for you?”

  “A bit,” he answered cryptically. The only ideas he could come up with were not palatable. An army regiment? A gang, perhaps, or a guild of thieves or criminals. The missing words perplexed him the most. Above the dragon, the letters R-A-E, and below the dragon U-A-E finished words mostly eaten away by the lye.

  Attempting to make sense of it threatened to drive him mad, and so, like everything else, he left the tattoo in the past, where it belonged.

  “Don’t you wonder what sort of work you did before … Before I found you, I mean?”

  “Often,” he answered, though he honestly spent more time pondering what enemy might have beaten him to death than what he’d done for wages.

  “You might have worked underground,” she posited. “You’re too pale to have seen much sun, but your … physique suggests a great deal of
physical labor.”

  “Does that offend you?”

  “Decidedly not. You’re perfect.” She pressed her hand to peach-tinged cheeks, hiding a shy smile. “I mean—I think your strength helped to see you through your ordeal. And for that, I am most grateful.”

  He allowed her compliment to warm him, but didn’t dare comment on it. “As am I. For a moment there, I feared that I’d never rise from that bed.”

  “As I always say, a lot can happen between now and never.”

  “Indeed.” He counted on it.

  A briny mist crept in from the bay just as they found their way back onto the expansive lawns at Southbourne Grove. It impeded their view of the stately white columns of the manor.

  Unexpectedly, Lorelai stopped, tugging him around until he faced her. A troubled wrinkle creased her sun-kissed brow, and rather than smooth it away, as Ash yearned to do, he tucked a few wisps of curls behind her ear. The unruly tendrils sprang right back to frame her temple.

  “Ash, what if you don’t like it at the foundry or in the mines? Do you think you’ll—go, now that you’re able?”

  “Go?” He puzzled. “Where would I go?”

  “If you can walk, that means you can run. And if you can do that … then … then you can leave whenever you like. Escape Mortimer.”

  “I run from no one.” Least of all Mortimer Weatherstoke. “My home is here.” With you, he added silently.

  She rushed on, as though she hadn’t heard the ardent finality of his words. “Suppose you want to look for your past? For your family?”

  “I don’t know. I have a feeling there’s nothing in my past worth finding. Perhaps I’d only uncover a reason for you to not…” He swallowed, unable to lend voice to a fear that had been eating at him for a while now.

  “To not what?” She stepped into the circle of his arms, running her hands across the muscles of his back and resting her cheek against his chest.

  Ash had become accustomed to her abrupt gestures of affection. As innocent as they were socially inappropriate, he’d come to crave them. In fact, hers was the only touch that didn’t repel him.

  “To not hold me … in your esteem, that is.” He enfolded her in the shelter of his arms, resting his chin on her crown. “I have the distinct feeling that whoever I might have been, was not anyone worth knowing.”

  “You are worth knowing now. You’re worth everything.”

  Ash did his best not to crush her to him. To keep his hold gentle, reverent. This could be heaven, this place in the mist. Clouds were tossed about them in playful swirls by errant winds. Perhaps time did not exist in this enchanted moment. Nor did any of the thousand reasons he should not love her. But he did.

  He loved her enough to kill for her.

  “I’ll miss you.” She blinked up at him, her eyes azure orbs of affection. Her pretty lips pursed in a pensive frown.

  His every muscle seemed to melt against her, their embrace warming from innocent to … something else.

  “Lorelai. Have you ever been kissed?”

  Her expression slid from pensive to perplexed. “No. Have you?”

  “… I don’t know.” He didn’t care to know.

  She winced. “Of course. Of course you don’t know. What a stupid question. I’m incessantly ridiculous—”

  He banished her tirade with the pressure of his lips against hers.

  His mouth lingered rather than demanded. Brushed and tasted. Savored. He dared not use his tongue, or his teeth, or any other part of him that hungered for her.

  He held in his arms the girl he loved. And thus was the cause for his caution.

  Lorelai was just that.

  A girl.

  He was no longer a boy. The feelings he had, the desires. The hunger. The heat. They belonged to a man, a man who would slake them with a woman.

  Not a girl.

  She clutched at him, her artless sigh giving him breath. Her response both shy and lush. The promise of something more.

  This could not be that. This was only a kiss of creation. A promise of something blooming between them. The overture to a symphony of longing he’d compose over time.

  I love you. The confession danced behind his lips, and so they remained pressed to hers. This he could not say, not until his evil deed was done. Not until her grief for her brother, such as it was, had finally passed.

  Ash would be a good man for her. After this one sin, he’d spend the rest of his life in repentant worship of her. She’d be his savior. His goddess. His life.

  And if hell awaited him after death for what he was about to do …

  So be it. He’d have lived a lifetime in the heaven of her love.

  The earth beneath them trembled with approaching hoofbeats, driving them apart.

  She held unsteady fingers to her parted lips, staring at him with eyes brightened by revelations and the whisper of something less angelic than usual.

  More carnal.

  I love you. The words would not leave his mind, nor his mouth.

  Suddenly her expression shifted, an inexplicable anxiety concealing the innocent awe. “Don’t go,” she whispered.

  “I must,” he panted, struggling to regain control of his breath.

  “But you’ll come back, won’t you?”

  “I told you I would.” Impassioned, he clutched at her arm. “Lorelai. There are only two indisputable facts in this world: One, that the sun will set in the west. And two, that I’ll come for you. Always.”

  “I just have this feeling—”

  Mortimer broke through the mists, nearly knocking them both over on his steed before he reined to a stop. Clenched in his fists were the reins of the nag upon which Ash would ride to Heybridge.

  Apparently pleased to ruin their moment, Mortimer sneered at his sister. “You’ll be releasing two pets today, Duck.”

  “You’ll both be back tomorrow,” she said, as though comforting herself.

  “Let’s get a move on,” Mortimer urged. “I’d hate to miss this appointment.”

  Ash caught the reins Mortimer hurled at him, enjoying the displeasure his reflexes caused the man who seemed to suck the air out of any space he occupied, even here in the open, replacing it with derision and dread.

  Not anymore. Not after today.

  Reluctantly, Ash released her arm and mounted, his mind set to his task with grim determination.

  “Take care,” Lorelai called. “Be safe.”

  When Ash looked back at her, she pressed a kiss to her fingertips and released it into the breeze toward him.

  “I’ll come back,” he reassured her.

  I love you.

  Had he known it might be the last time he’d see her, he would have said the words.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Twenty Years Later

  If Lorelai had thought to have pockets sewn into her wedding dress, she’d have weighted them with stones and let the Black Water River wash her corpse out to sea.

  She gazed out her bedroom window feeling a growing kinship with the river. The disappearing sun turned the glassy, still waters a bittersweet coral. How tranquil it seemed. How serene. And yet, she understood the churning currents beneath. The murky, treacherous depths which swept many an unwilling soul into the Channel.

  Take me, she begged. Anything to escape today.

  All those people. All those eyes on her, the shy spinster cripple of Southbourne Grove, limping down the aisle to wed an old man with the face of a warthog, and a disposition to match.

  An old man who’d come up in the world, desperate to solidify his place in society with a noble marriage to an ancient, titled family. Desperate enough to wed someone on the wrong side of thirty with a serious physical hindrance.

  Everyone in the county had quickly sent their RSVP and, it seemed, more people would attend the wedding than could fit in their modest vicarage. Not because they cared, or wished her well, but because they hoped for a spectacle.

  They would come because Mortimer’s penchant for rui
ning parties bordered on the legendary. He’d gambled away both his home and his sister to a wealthy machinist whose parents had been pig farmers. What else could possibly go wrong?

  Plenty. She cringed.

  Their father had hoped age would calm Mortimer’s cruel spirit. But the years only served to amplify it.

  For Sir Robert, death had been a mercy.

  Lorelai might have done something desperate long ago, were it not for the woman kneeling behind her, pins in her mouth, taking in the seams of her wedding dress at the last possible moment.

  “You’ve lost an alarming amount of weight, dear,” Veronica Weatherstoke, her sister-in-law, said, clucking her tongue sympathetically. “I believe I heard Mr. Gooch mention a certain aversion to slight-framed women.”

  “So he did.” Their eyes met in silent commiseration until the delicate bones of Veronica’s lovely features were blurred by offending moisture.

  Lord, she hadn’t cried since … Well, for decades. “Do you know what the worst of it is?”

  “What’s that, darling?”

  “I’m going to be Mrs. Sylvester Gooch. Gooch!” she wailed, right before a hysterical bubble of laughter burst from her chest. How strange that her despair could be so hilarious. That a giggle could make a substitution for a sob. “As if my life couldn’t get more pathetic and pitiful.”

  Veronica’s cheeks dimpled with the suggestion of a smile, though a desolate sadness likewise lurked in the emerald of her eyes. “I imagine, were Mr. Gooch a kind man, the surname wouldn’t matter so much.”

  “I should say not,” Lorelai agreed.

  Tamerlane, Lorelai’s one-eared black cat, brushed against her skirts. Heedless of his tendency to leave tufts of long hair against just about any fabric, she picked him up to stroke his neck.

  “When Mortimer came to court me … I thought the Countess Southbourne the handsomest-sounding title one could desire,” Veronica recalled. “And now…”

  Now Veronica Weatherstoke, her brother’s young bride, once thought the loveliest woman in the county, had the solemn, wary eyes of a war refugee.